Keep your eye on the
ball and wait for the perfect pitch. Don't forget the
autioneers work on commission. They're not there to hand
you a bargain.

Going to an auction is a lot like watching a major league baseball
game. The whole experience is much more enjoyable and productive
if you first know -- and thoroughly understand -- how the game is
played. So, here’s the lineup, the windup and the first pitch.

“Who’ll give me a thousand dollar bill to go?”
barks the auctioneer.

You are the batter, standing alone at the plate. Keeping your eye
-- and ear -- on the ball, you wait for the perfect pitch.

“Five hundred, then. Let’s go!”

The person throwing the ball is the auctioneer. Pitches usually
come hard and fast, right down the middle of the strike zone. But
be on guard for the occasional slider, change-up or curve ball.
You don’t want to swing at anything high and outside, or you
will quickly end up bidding much more than maybe you had to.

Remember, it’s not the auctioneer’s job to load you
up with a lot of bargains. Auctioneers work on commission. The more
money they get for an item, the more money they make.

“Two-fifty! Folks, it’s worth four times that!”

Because auctioneers can’t see or hear everything and everyone
from the podium, they often have helpers called ringmen. Like infielders,
ringmen cover all of the bases and runners.

Quietly taking it all in, like the umpire behind home plate, is
the clerk. Instead of calling balls and strikes, the clerk writes
down the final bid and the bidder’s number.

“Six-fifty. Now seven. Now eight.”

And then there are the other bidders. Think of them as outfielders,
the spoilers on the opposing team. Blink, wait a split second too
long and they can -- and will -- reach a gloved hand over the outfield
wall and turn your guaranteed home run into an instant out.

There are basically three rules at any auction: “Know what
you’re doing. Know when to bid. Know what you’re bidding
on.” Price is largely determined by just three factors: Condition,
condition, condition. So says the man who has sold thousands of
auctions over a 55-year career, everything from farm equipment and
farms to antiques, businesses, auto garages, contractors, dairy
cattle, race horses, livestock of all kinds, machinery and machinery
dealerships, household auctions and estate auctions.

The three basic rules:
Know what you’re doing. Know when to bid. Know what
you’re bidding on.

His name is Donald Lee DeVault. He is my 82-year-old father. And
since I was a little child I’ve marveled at how he could consistently
ask an opening price that was about the real worth of an item, drop
down to where people start bidding and then work the bid right back
to where he began -- and often beyond. He is exactly the kind of
auctioneer I would want to sell my auction: Extremely knowledgeable,
painfully honest and tirelessly hard-working.

“I try to get everything I can get for the seller,”
Dad explains. That may be one of the reasons he was asked to sell
the Junior 4-H cattle auctions for decades at the Delaware County
Fair in my hometown of Delaware, Ohio.

It’s also what cost Dad his first auction job after just
five months at the stockyards in Marion, Ohio. One of the biggest
meat packers in the area was used to buying cattle as cheaply as
possible. Then this new auctioneer showed up. “I made him
pay more than he felt he needed to pay,” Dad recalls. The
buyer complained to the boss: “Hey, I can’t make any
money off of that DeVault.” Rather than get fired, Dad quit.

“You absolutely can’t play favorites and this guy
wanted to play favorites. He was buying fat, finished cattle. He
just thought I hung on too long. Somebody else got them and he started
bellyaching.”

Getting the most for your money
(a.k.a. How to keep the wool out of your eyes)

Here is some of Dad’s advice on how to get the best buys
at an auction:

“For a person who has never been to a sale, go
with someone who has been to a few auctions before. Then
just kind of stand back until the bidding gets started, see who
is doing what.” Or, as Yogi Berra once put it, “You
can observe a lot by watching.”

Dad agrees. “Basically, if people know what they want, have
some idea of its value and pay attention to what is said, they can
get some good buys at an auction. Representation means a lot. Listen
to what the auctioneer says about the condition of the item for
sale, its age, what’s been done to it, how it works or doesn’t
work.”

The first step toward any auction is to register at the cashier’s
office. You will be asked for identification, usually a driver’s
license, and assigned a bidder’s number that is printed on
a big cardboard card. Don’t lose the card. That number is
the only way the auction clerk has of keeping track of what you
buy.

Bring money. Cash still makes no
enemies. Checks are another matter, which is why some auctioneers
insist on a recent letter from your bank. To solve that headache,
credit cards are being accepted at more and more auctions.

Each sale begins with the auctioneer saying a little bit about
the owner, the reasons for the auction and the overall condition
of the items for sale. Then there are the terms of sale. “What
you see is what you get. You buy it where it is, as is.” Finally,
there are warnings against writing bad checks and stealing, both
of which are common problems at any auction. “If you write
a bad check or or steal anything, we WILL prosecute you to the fullest
extent of the law,” is how Dad usually put it. Other auctioneers
are less gentlemanly. At an auction in Delaware state a few years
ago, one auctioneer brandished a baseball bat. He threatened to
beat thieves with it, then call the police and maybe an ambulance.
It figures. That was an annual farm machinery consignment auction.

Bidding -- “If you know what you’re doing, sometimes
you can start the bidding.” Dad’s emphasis is on “sometimes.”
It’s usually not a good idea to be
the opening bidder. “If you’re willing to bid
a thousand, don’t give a thousand. Go a couple of hundred.
Follow the chant. Learn to know what they’re saying. The main
thing you want to listen to is the number. Ignore the filler between
the numbers. If you’re certain that you want to buy an item,
you definitely have to be the last bidder,” he says

Know about what you want -- and what you
want to pay. With livestock, learn all you can about breeding
before you ever make a bid. If you’re in the market for a
tractor and other machinery, do your homework first. Check out new
and used prices. Evaluate the condition of tires, sheet metal and
how the engine runs. Look at the number of hours on the engine.
Calculate what you might have to spend on repairs.

Know your competition. “At
a farm auction, there are apt to be a lot of machinery dealers.
They don’t necessarily want everybody to know what they’re
bidding on. They’ll wink or wiggle a finger, have a hand on
their hat or take their hat off to signal a bid. It’s pretty
hard to know about some of these things, especially when you have
two or three ringmen working the sale.”

It pays to know a little
about your auctioneer. First and foremost, you want to
look for someone who's honest. And, since most people
aren't just at auction to buy, but also to be entertained,
it helps if the auctioneer has a good sense of humor.

Know your auctioneer. “Every auctioneer is a little different.
It pays to know a little bit about your auctioneer. Look
for an auctioneer who is known for honesty and forthrightness.
If it’s a local person, a lot of people probably already know
what the auctioneer is like. If not, ask around,” Dad says.
“Some auctioneers joke around and some won’t. A little
humor goes a long way. A lot of people go to auctions for entertainment.
If you keep people in a jovial mood they will spend more money,
usually. Not always. We always tried to have a good time with people.”

Make a habit of reading auction notices
in the daily newspaper or regional farm papers and magazines. Keep
an eye out for the logos of local or favorite auctioneers. Cardboard
sale bills that were once a common site on rural telephone poles
and in feed stores have largely been replaced by the internet. Today,
most auctioneers have websites that often include photographs and
detailed descriptions of major items coming up for sale. Another
good guide for your bidding is Dad’s favorite TV program,
“Antique Roadshow,” the most popular program on public
television.

Since auctions don’t deliver, come
prepared to haul home whatever you’re likely to buy.
Don’t count on meeting some kind soul with a big heart and
an empty pickup truck or trailer. Remember, once you buy an item,
it’s yours. So, depending on its size and portability, keep
an eye on it until it is paid for and safely in your vehicle.

Be somewhat wary of consignment auctions,
since they consist of things that people just want to get rid of.
You can get some good buys on new items at consignment sales, though.
I once bought a brand new John Deere 550 rotary tiller at an out-of-state
consignment sale -- for about half the new price. The tiller had
sat on the dealer’s lot for three years because its 50-inch
width was too small. Landscapers and farmers all wanted 60-inch
tillers. The dealer finally just got tired of looking at it. Estate
auctions, on the other hand, always bring out a good crowd -- even
in the middle of haying season.

Lastly, don’t count on bad weather
to keep the crowds away and the bidding low. In more than
half a century of selling auctions, Dad only had to cancel a handful
of sales due to ice storms or blizzards. “Weather is not the
factor one would think.” If anything, he adds, bad weather
brings more people to an auction because they figure everyone else
will stay home where it’s warm and dry.

Yes, auctions really are a lot like basball, Yogi-isms and all:
“If people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, nobody’s
going to stop them. When you come to a fork in the road ... Take
it. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”

Farm journalist George DeVault was editor of The
New Farm magazine for 10 years. He and his wife, Melanie, raise
blueberries, cut flowers and vegetables on 20 preserved acres near
Emmaus, PA.